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onu anir CoIIup. 



PUBLIC ADDRESS 



DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF THE 



MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE OE EEPEESENTATIYES, 



March 8, 1860. 




By F. D. HUNTINGTON, 



PREACHER TO THE UNIVERSITY, AND PLUMMER PROFESSOR OP 
CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD COLLEGE. 



BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, LEE, & CO., 

117 Washington Street. 
1860. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

CROSBY, NICHOLS, LEE, & CO., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 



The subject that I have been requested 
to bring before you, my friends and fel- 
low-citizens, has been already announced 
in the notice that has called us together. 
It falls into place in a series of earnest 
inquiries as to the proper powers and 
methods of early education, and belongs 
especially to that department of this 
great theme which pertains to the Fam- 
ily. The precise question before us is 
this : What connection has the discipline 
of the child in his first years with his 



4 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

safety, success, and character in the pub- 
lic seminary, where he is sent to enter on 
the higher branches of scholarship ? Such 
seminaries are of different grades, names, 
and objects. The College may be taken 
as the representative of them all. 

The statement of the question sup- 
poses that such an institution has a dis- 
tinctive and easily recognized constitu- 
tion; that the life lived in it is a pecu- 
liar kind of life, with its own forces 
and perils; and that certain conditions 
of honor, happiness, and usefulness are 
found there which justify a special con- 
sideration. 

Of the College this is unquestionably 
true. More than most other forms of 
social living, it is a world within itseE 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 5 

It has a local government ; a character- 
istic public sentiment ; a body of tradi- 
tional notions, maxims, and usages, pure- 
ly conventional, handed down from class 
to class, and exerting an almost inevita- 
ble influence on every member. To a 
great extent, unless favored by accidental 
associations in the neighborhood, the stu- 
dents are removed from general society, 
and for a large part of the year they are 
with hardly anybody but each other. 
They will have their own humors, fash- 
ions, politics, and prejudices. The com- 
pactness of the population, the pride of 
the place, and the quickness of youthful 
sensibility, render them very sympathetic, 
and sensitive to any impression affecting 

their repute, passions, or interests ; while 

1* 



6 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

the moods produced are apt to be 
changeable in proportion to their inten- 
sity. Of course, in such a spot, .besides 
the stimulus and the obstacles, the temp- 
tation and the support, common to hu- 
manity everywhere, there will be some 
singular conditions of comfort, of enjoy- 
ment, and of moral security and progress. 
The other scene of culture that our 
topic presents to us is the Family. This 
is the primitive and simplest type of 
social life. It is permanent and divine, 
— an institution fraught with greater 
blessings to man than any other beneath 
the heavens, except the Church, — a nur- 
sery of the Church itself, and the chosen 
symbol of the whole spiritual creation of 
the Father. It was clearly the design 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 7 

of the Maker of our manifold and marvel- 
lous organization that man should live 
in a Home. His faculties cannot unfold 
symmetrically and healthily save in its 
genial air, and amidst its varied and deli- 
cate system of dependencies, affections, 
amenities, and authorities. Something 
will always be wanting to the complete- 
ness of a character reared without this 
nurture, — some strength, or refinement, 
or other element of maturity. As civili- 
zation rises, the home grows sacred, be- 
coming not only man's castle, but his 
conservatory, gallery, library, music-room, 
and oratory. With the school-house, the 
shop, and the sanctuary, it takes its place 
as one of the four representative struc- 
tures of a cultivated and Christian state. 



8 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

Marriage is its sacrament. Man in Chris- 
tian wedlock, the house-band, is meant 
for its custodian, law-giver, instructor, 
and priest. "Wise governments will 
watch scrupulously all specious inva- 
sions of its venerable and precious im- 
munities to purity and order, — whether 
in the shape of a canting and corrupt 
polygamy assuming the pretence of relig- 
ion, or of an arrogant and radical social- 
ism, reasserting the license of nature, — 
and will take care to extinguish them by 
the imperative mercy of the law. Sensi- 
ble and thoughtful people, acting in their 
individual freedom and responsibility, 
will resist all popular encroachments on 
the same great moral safeguard, whether 
these operate by letting children loose 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 9 

into company and the street before their 
principles can be formed, or by giv- 
ing np every evening to public excite- 
ment, or by merging the reserved life 
of the household in the promiscuous 
eating-tables, vulgarizing mixtures, and 
caravansary encampments of boarding- 
hotels. Where would New England 
have been to-day, if our fathers had 
boarded out ? or had gone five nights in 
a week to theatre and ball-room, with 
perhaps a sacred concert and a lecture 
on biology for the other two ? The 
vigorous and muscular virtues of true 
manhood and womanhood are nourished 
and knit together, and made equal to the 
pressure and soliciting of the world, only 
by the wholesome retirement, and still- 



10 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

ness, and meditation, and love, and faith 
of home. 

Here, then, we have the two principal 
terms of our subject: College and Home. 
When the student goes to the College, 
he is separated temporarily from all do- 
mestic life, — not yet making his own 
home, leaving that of his childhood, and 
hanging between the two, in a state 
somewhat exceptional and unsheltered. 

Various opinions are held by intelli- 
gent persons as to the desirableness and 
the moral effect of this absence from 
home. By the majority among us, it is 
probably regarded as simply a necessary 
means of getting at the benefits of the 
literary institution, with its expensive 
and rare apparatus, official stafi^ and 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 11 

scholarly appliances. That is, the ar- 
rangement is rather complied with than 
preferred. Others think it offers a posi- 
tive advantage in the development of a 
youthful character. It is said to bring 
out self-reliance, balance, energy, tact, 
address; to break up inveterate and 
faulty habits in manners and temper; 
to rub off cobwebs, and smooth down 
angles; and so to do certain things for 
a young man, by way of enlarging 
and polishing him, which could not 
be done otherwise. This impression is 
very general in England, where it has 
contributed to the celebrity of the na- 
tional schools and universities. So an 
eminent English scholar, in a popular 
work, I remember, represents a conceited 



12 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

young lord as having an obstinate mass 
of inherited arrogance and home-bred 
nonsense taken out of him, on his first 
arrival at Eton, by two timely kicks from 
the son of a commoner, received on the 
ball-ground. The same view prevails 
considerably on the Continent, and is 
held by not a few in our own country. 
There is an obvious truth in it. But, in 
general, the supposed advantage is occa- 
sioned by some pre-existing defect or 
mistake in the education or circum- 
stances at home. Some passion has been 
left uncurbed, some capacity neglected, 
or some folly flourishing; and now the 
best, if not the only, remedy is sought in 
pushing off the wronged stripling upon 
severer, or more exciting, or possibly 
kindlier fortunes, among his fellows. 



i 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 13 

Directly opposite to this view is that 
which considers the removal of a boy 
from home, even for a limited period, to 
be a misfortune; and even suggests an 
attempt, as is now quite frequent, to 
break the force of that evil, by a tem- 
porary transfer of the family residence 
to the seat of the College. 

Worse and more desperate than all is 
the custom, not altogether unknown, of 
sending the boy to College simply be- 
cause he cannot be tolerated at home : 
as a convenient device for getting rid of 
his turbulent spirit, idle habits, and head- 
strong will, for four awkward years: 
making the institution, instead of his 
Alma Mater, — even should he survive 
the doubtful chances of matriculation, — 



14 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

a sort of domestic Botany Bay for unruly 
children, where they do not go, but are 
sent, and where they do not stay, but are 
kept ; and whence they are as apt to be 
rusticated as graduated. What effect 
this class of luxuriously-bred, pleasure- 
seeking, study-hating inmates are likely 
to have on the literary character, intel- 
lectual standards, and public reputation 
of a College, you can imagine. 

There is, to be sure, a theory, — and in 
the nature of the case it can be at pres- 
ent little more than a theory, — that the 
College should make itself a substitute 
for the Home, cherish its children as 
under domestic influences, and stand 
toward them in loco parentis. We are 
told that college discipline should be 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 15 

fatherly and tender; that the students 
should be drawn into the families of 
their instructors; and should be admon- 
ished of their dangers, and corrected for 
their sins, as with the patient eye and 
hand and tongue of yearning affection. 
These are weighty words, and charged 
with solemn meaning. They will yet be 
spoken, and respoken, I trust, by lips of 
such authority, coupled with plans of 
such wisdom, in a time of riper Christian 
insight and attainment than ours, that 
they shall pronounce not only a proph- 
ecy, or a wish, but a blessed fulfilment 
and law. Meantime, however, it is right 
that it should be known where the real 
obstacle to such a confidential and de- 
lightful relation between pupil and 



16 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

teacher is to be found. It is not all on 
one side. It exists largely with the 
pupil himself and his friends at home. 
"To ask a college government to play 
the father to lads who have never 
learned what it is to be sons, is to make 
the place not only a Charity School, but 
a Foundling Hospital. Such a division 
of labor leaves the actual father only the 
right to indulge the child, and assigns to 
the Faculty the uncomfortable necessity 
of punishing him." Those parents who 
expect to take the benefit of a " paternal 
government" for their sons in the Col- 
lege must not make a mockery of it in 
their own habits. And the students 
themselves must entertain this pleasant 
theory of their relations before they are 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 17 

arraigned for violating the laws, as well 
as after. There are certainly some offi- 
cers in all our Colleges that are not only 
ready, but eager, to welcome the mem- 
bers of their classes to their family cir- 
cles, and to aid and support them with 
all the encouragements and counsels at 
their command. But on the student's 
part natural reserve, or the shyness 
created by an erroneous training, or an 
artificial notion of liberty, or a dread 
of stiff receptions, or a morbid pride 
of appearance, or the fear of being 
suspected of currying favor with the 
Faculty, stands in the way. And some- 
times the very parents who have uncon- 
sciously prepared this result are the first 
to complain of it. 

2* B 



18 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

Indeed, as this last remark reminds us, 
one of the present embarrassments which 
attend our academic administration, and 
one which I gladly take this occasion to 
expose, is a too prevalent ignorance, if 
not a positive misunderstanding, on the 
part of the surrounding community, as 
to the actual interior spirit, life, and 
practical operation of our Colleges. I 
just spoke of these seminaries as little 
worlds within themselves. It is to be 
said, further, that they are worlds of 
which the community might advanta- 
geously acquire increased information. 
Gross misjudgments are continually com- 
ing to light as to the principles, the 
rules, and often as to the open facts of 
college government. In some cases, 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 19 

these false impressions only work out 
their damage in a private way. In oth- 
ers they get a public utterance, are cir- 
culated in the form of vague complaints, 
and perhaps furnish disparaging para- 
graphs for newspapers. But however 
held they exert an injurious influence 
on the institution, and, by weakening 
confidence in its management, abridge its 
usefulness. They tend to disturb, and, 
where there is already any excitement, 
to inflame and mislead the minds of 
the pupils, encouraging every little dis- 
content or insubordination among them, 
and possibly tempting them into bolder 
acts of disobedience, which bring on heav- 
ier penalties. It would seem as if an ex- 
tensive, established, responsible seat of 



20 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

learning, largely directed by the repre- 
sentatives of the people, provided with 
officers of ripe age, character, experi- 
ence, and having no special motives to 
abuse anybody or to hurt their own rep- 
utation, and acting as a check on one 
another, might reasonably enough be 
presumed to proceed in matters of edu- 
cation and discipline thoughtfully, con- 
scientiously, tenderly, and wisely. It 
would seem as if the occasional disaffec- 
tion of a refractory or unsuccessful pu- 
pil might fail to justify a hasty censure, 
whether in parlors or by the press. At 
any rate, the liability to such misrep- 
resentation would be much diminished 
by a better acquaintance between the 
outside of these institutions and the in- 



HOME AND" COLLEGE. 21 

side. They certainly need the moral sup- 
port and reliance of right-minded men. 
As with individuals, confidence in them 
redoubles their power. They move on 
in the best internal harmony, and to the 
largest general benefaction, only when 
the citizens in their homes comprehend 
their policy, sustain their measures, and 
are willing to bear some personal griev- 
ances for the sake of their prosperity. 

Be these things as they may, to the 
College the young man comes. Time, 
money, trouble, and anxiety are expend- 
ed on his course. The first question is, 
How shall that course be made honor- 
able, happy, and successful? How, for 
the time while it is passing, and for the 
future manhood? 



22 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

In answering this question, the pri- 
mary sources to which we may look are 
three : the student himself, the institu- 
tion that trains him, and the home that 
has trained him heretofore. Between 
these three parties the vast and august 
responsibility is divided. 

Our concern, at present, is with the 
third; — the one which is often left out 
of account altogether, as an indifferent 
or negative element ; the one which is 
very apt to forget that it has anything 
to do with the result. Parents look to 
their sons and to the College to achieve 
a result which their own mistakes have 
practically prohibited in advance; or to 
correct faults which their own neglect 
has ineradicably planted; or else to 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 23 

prune off excrescences which their own 
bad temper or taste has bound fast upon 
the boy's back, — the curse of his colle- 
giate and all his after days. So far is 
this expectation from being just, that I 
suspect most college officers, who have 
been long in the habit of observing un- 
dergraduate developments of character, 
would be able to tell quite satisfactorily, 
before a class are half through their 
course, in what sort of homes the differ- 
ent members have lived, and to predict 
a result in accordance with that prepa- 
ration. 

For the sake of clearness and conven- 
ience, I shall take up a few of the char- 
acteristic features of the college experi- 
ence, both as presenting points of peril 



24 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

and conditions of success, and ask you 
to look at them in order. 

I. Let the first, because the most con- 
spicuous of these, be the control of the 
appetites and animal passions. Not that 
sins in this regard are by any means the 
most deep-struck, subtle, or fatal of all 
moral disorders. Settled selfishness, cun- 
ning, deceit, and unbelief are all more 
hopeless. But sensual offences are vis- 
ible and disastrous in their demonstra- 
tion, quick in retribution, and in crowded 
populations, where the facilities of in- 
dulgence are multiplied, are frightfully 
fostered by social customs. Is it proba- 
ble they will be originated at College, 
in a young man whose character has 
been free from them through his ear- 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 25 

lier years ; where their germs have not 
been suffered to form and grow; where 
habit has made self-control easy ; where 
purity, of body and spirit, temperance in 
things allowable, and abstinence from 
things hurtful, have created a strong 
vantage-ground, in the constitution, for 
virtue ? Consider. The average age at 
which Freshmen enter is now, perhaps, 
eighteen years. Suppose it were a year 
or two younger. Does it seem probable, 
according to all we know of the moral 
laws, that after that time, and within a 
short period, desires which had before 
been unfelt should break out into sudden 
and ungovernable activity, or that those 
which had been held in a rational sub- 
jection should all at once overmaster 



26 HOMi: AND COLLEGE. 

their restraints, and spring up with pru- 
rient eagerness, and rush into shameless 

license? Allowing for exceptional in- 
stances, this would not be likely under 
(in// circumstances: still less, where the 
vigilance of governors, Hie rules of Hie. 
place, the standards of promotion, and 
the exactions of daily routine in pres- 
ence jiikI study, all lend to resist propen- 
sities t<> dissipation. We must look far- 
ther back, not only for the seeds, but 
often for the blade and the ear of these 
poisonous growths. Their morbid begin- 
nings are to l>e found, not seldom, very 

near the cradle, — by the portals of that 
Land of Life where the EbaJ and G-erizim 
of cursing and Messing stand side by 
side. They are in the infantile encour- 



HOME AND COLLKQE. 



27 



agements of inborn depravitie They 
are in the senseless gratifications of sen 
hu;i l importunity; in the sweetmeats and 

confer,!, ion;; of* Uic nur.rry; in the .limn 

lants and seductions of highly seasoned 
tables; in the nibblings and sippings tol- 
erated by weak or reckless parents, or 
hy untaught domestics ; in all that <'i|>- 
paratuH and comm'iHHury of luxury which 
pervert the primal ordinations of nature 
in the l«> ( ly 7 — heat its blood and cor 
rupt ils juices, ( J«ill the digestion and 
quicken the palate, Loosen the muscles 
and invigorate the lusts, — disincline to 
action, but instigate to pleasure. Thence 
come intemperance, gluttony, and im- 

r,|i;i.;,ljl,y. r TI J' - y WWICJ Of all <'.liil'li;:li U> 

dulgences in eating and drinking. Wheatr 



28 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 



ever theories you may have about 
drunkenness and the cure of it, — what- 
ever interpretation you may put upon 
the apostolic recommendation of " a little 
wine for the stomach's sake " of an in- 
dividual, and that individual probably an 
invalid, in a wine-producing country, — 
one thing is clear : the class of persons 
for whose stomachs, brains, and souls no 
wine-drinking at all is needful is that of 
young men in their vigor, young men 
away from home securities, — such as 
they may be, — young men amidst con- 
vivial exposures, and young men whose 
business is the use of their minds. Late 
hours, bad company, mornings of head- 
ache, dull recitations, long absence-lists, 
declining scholarship, complication in 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 29 

crime, broken health, a blighted life, — 
this is a catalogue of evils which has its 
real explanation, not on College premises, 
but in the houses from which the College 
draws its mixed assemblages; while, on 
the other hand, those in its walls that 
carry clear heads and a tender conscience, 
intellects not sluggish with animal ex- 
cess, but the flesh made the light and 
nimble and hardy servitor of the soul, 
are those who have been taught to keep 
their bodies under from their childhood, 
have fought their battle with the imps 
and demons of the senses long ago, and 
now scarcely know what the temptation 
to a surfeit or a carousal means. 

In this connection, some reference 
ought to be made to habits of bodily 

3* 



30 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

health; for it is manifest — more mani- 
fest at present than it used to be — that 
neither success, nor happiness, nor use- 
fulness in the scholar is independent of 
the physical condition. Just now, under 
the impetus of a fresh enthusiasm, the 
muscles are coming to unprecedented 
honor. But it is to be carefully consid- 
ered how very unfavorable a spot a Col- 
lege is for the culture, not to say the 
repair, of the physical powers. The stu- 
dent has had too little experience of ill- 
ness and pain in his own person to teach 
him the dangers that hang about wet 
feet, bad ventilation, irregular or solitary 
meals, careless changes of clothing, sud- 
den checking of perspiration, lying on 
the ground in the intervals of a heating 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 31 

game of ball, late study by artificial light, 
neglect of exercise, and indulgences in 
pastry, strong coffee, and tobacco. And 
so every class that enters is more or less 
thinned, before graduation, by disease; 
perhaps by some seated and organic de- 
rangement, perhaps by some local dis- 
turbance, like weak eyes, or dyspepsia, all 
springing from the same general causes. 
The two principal safeguards against 
these disorders are the energy of a 
youthful constitution, which is abundant- 
ly relied upon, and judicious self-regula- 
tion, learned as a habit at home. If the 
latter is wanting, the risks are fearful 
that all the noblest promise and action 
of the brain will surrender to inflamed 
lungs, or shattered nerves, or an inert 



32 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

liver, or a fever, before the costly storing 
up of knowledge has given place to the 
work of life. 

II. A second prevalent source of trou- 
ble and failure to the student is insubor- 
dination. The moment he joins his class 
he finds prepared for him a collection 
of notions embodied in maxims, hand- 
ed down from one generation to an- 
other, about as sacred to a conventional 
respect as the Mishna and Gemara to the 
Eabbinical schools, — among which no- 
tions are reckoned a natural and neces- 
sary hostility of the subject to the gov- 
ernment, a disposition to shirk duties, 
and to regard every law evaded or les- 
son escaped as a solid gain, — with a 
regular bias to esteem the hinderance of 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 33 

an instructor the special prosperity of 
the pupil. Of course, it would be absurd 
and wicked to construe these conven- 
tions as signs of personal, conscious, and 
deliberate ill-will in the young men, who 
are commonly gentlemen wholly incapa- 
ble of harboring any such feeling, when 
taken out of its local connections and 
presented as a subject of common sense. 
But, notwithstanding, closely connected 
with them are many temptations and 
acts of real disobedience; violations of 
law, occasions of penalty, and thus of 
mortification and sorrow. What is want- 
ed is the simple idea of order, an instinct 
of our nature, made into a vital principle 
applicable to all the relations and man- 
agement of life, by the patient, steady 



34 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

nurture of parental and domestic disci- 
pline. It belongs there, because, being a 
principle which often has to grapple and 
fight with self-will, it needs to be first un- 
folded amidst the gentle and softening 
influences of affection, beautified by sym- 
pathy, and sanctified by faith. If first 
applied in the colder and more distant 
connections between Faculty and pupils, 
there must be more or less resistance, 
friction, and violence. It is a principle 
that begins to be formed or frustrated 
just as soon as the first issue arises be- 
tween the will of the infant child and 
the will of those set over him. In a 
well-governed household, it will be root- 
ed and settled, almost past possible re- 
consideration, before the academic period 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 35 

has arrived. Yet who does not see that 
it is just as much for the comfort and 
peace of the student as of the officers ; 
that it shuts up a thousand open vexing 
questions ; that it cuts off countless op- 
portunities of collision and regret ; that 
it forestalls the very beginnings of rebel- 
lion by a secret decision which forbids 
the bare thought of it ; and that it thus 
ministers to the common tranquillity of 
the collegiate body and its members? 
Indeed, why not extend the same truth 
to the whole structure of civilized soci- 
ety? It is just here, in the temper of 
insubordination, — the individual judg- 
ing the state, the young judging the old, 
the subject judging the law, and the 
creature prescribing methods to the Cre- 



36 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

ator, — that we now find one of the radi- 
cal vices of the commonwealth, of our 
social manners, and of the Church. Pun- 
ishments for it are easy enough to invent 
and apply, under any secure govern- 
ment. But how much better and wiser 
to instil the obedient and orderly spirit 
into the very blood and choice of child- 
hood, so that the Home shall both give 
and receive the blessing ! 

Why may we not expect, under this 
more Christian family tutelage, that, 
instead of a transmitted antagonism, we 
shall yet see in Universities a transmit- 
ted loyalty, — ruler and subject bound 
together, if not directly by mutual con- 
fidence, then at least by a pride and 
respect for sanctioned authority common 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 37 

to them both, — the interest and honor 
of the government recognized as the in- 
terest and honor of every person gov- 
erned, — no need of degrading sentences, 
but only to repronounce, as a watchword, 
or rallying-cry, the name of that "mother 
mild," which has become the symbol of 
liberty and rights, because of duties and 
of law ? 

III. Deserving separate mention, 
though closely connected with the fore- 
going, is the danger of self-assertion: 
a form of selfishness manifested not 
through the appetites, and less in op- 
position to the government than to the 
claims of others, — a blemish on youthful 
character, and an obstacle to true College 
success. 

4 



38 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 



Young men are quick at reading each 
other's qualities. Self-seeking has no 
better prospects there than in the world 
at large. To make it prosper, even with 
the transient honors of mortality, and to 
save it from contempt, it needs extraor- 
dinary management. It needs the cun- 
ning that knows how to conceal, and the 
calculation that goes round about. Now 
these are not apt to be the attributes of 
the young. Ordinarily they are frank, 
impulsive, candid. By their peculiar 
standards, no sort of man is more surely 
and swiftly disesteemed than he who 
thrusts into his social intercourse, or his 
scholastic performances and literary fel- 
lowships, the conscious demands of self. 
See how much, therefore, of the proper 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 39 

joy and nobler satisfaction of his course 
that student loses altogether who, by 
being the fondled pet of his parents, the 
flattered ornament of the household cir- 
cle, humored even in his most foolish 
caprices, and coaxed where he ought to 
be denied, has for his early years a long 
lesson in egotism and vanity. One of 
two receptions awaits him, the moment 
he sets his foot on the College grounds. 
Either he is forthwith so snubbed and 
satirized and hustled as to be brought to 
humbler bearings, has the virus taken 
out of him, and, by an effectual accession 
of sense and modesty, gives up the pre- 
tension at once of a fop, a u genius," or a 
prig; or else, by a special dispensation 
of good nature, his companions let him 



40 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 



alone, and he goes on his way quietly 
shunned, secretly disliked, abridged of 
his influence, and of course shortened in 
his manhood. 

Another direction taken by the same 
sort of conceit is that of a protest against 
the prescribed methods and established 
curriculum of the institution. A discov- 
ery is made by the lad, that the long ex- 
periment of learned men, who for genera- 
tions have given their lives to the matter, 
has somehow missed the practical point; 
and so, instead of making up his mind 
to use the apparatus, instruction, libra- 
ry, and cabinet, for the express purpose 
assigned, and for which he or his friends 
must pay so much time and money, he 
shirks the regular studies, sets up an im- 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 41 

age of general belles-lettres reputation 
or thrilling eloquence, reads poetry and 
the reviews, attends the societies, counts 
it a special piece of wit to despise the 
sciences and classics, and puts himself 
into an attitude of general criticism, if 
not compassion, towards the particular 
objects and industries of the place. Pos- 
sibly he undertakes the "mission" of a 
"reformer of all work," and enlists in 
philanthropic endeavors to rectify the 
policy of the College, when he ought 
to be learning its lessons. Now, for 
these cases, — which are not common, but 
which occur, — there is no proper remedy 
in the collegiate instruction. The reme- 
dy, which is rather a preventive, lies in 
those plastic periods when every child 

4# 



42 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

should learn his place, be shown the 
honor and decorum of respecting his su- 
periors and obeying their rules. If this 
is slighted in its season, the retribution is 
parental mortification at a wasted or a 
suddenly terminated College career. 

IV. The intellectual form of selfishness 
is emulative ambition : a radical disorder 
in our schools and our scholarship. Let 
me tell you what I have seen in our 
Christian New England; — two brilliant, 
high-hearted youths, the rival leaders 
of their class, all the rest left behind, 
stretching across the four years' course 
neck and neck, stimulated by the spur 
of an eager emulation, sacrificing health 
and peace, only to drop, one into a grave 
and the other into mental perversion, at 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 43 

the end of the heat : this instead of that 
nobler spectacle, — both striving gener- 
ously together for wisdom's own immor- 
tal and unbounded good, each rejoicing 
in the other's gains, and then both stand- 
ing, nay, kneeling rather, gratefully to- 
gether on the summit both have reached. 
We put our pupils too much on this race, 
not that they may attain a common 
good, but that they may outstrip each 
other. To be wise, to be strong, to be 
masters of life, wielders of bright weap- 
ons against all ignorance and wrong, — 
this is not made the aim, — but the poor 
complacency of looking back on the rest. 
A hateful fire is set running through the 
fresh growths of these unsordid breasts, 
which scorches, blights, and blackens, 



44 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

wherever its hot tongue can find a 
generous feeling to singe. Paint me, 
said the boy Chatterton, to an artist 
who asked for a design, — paint me 
an angel with trumpet and wings, to 
publish my name over the world ! Pla- 
giarism, madness, suicide, were the hor- 
rible chapters of his biography. Why 
talk of following knowledge for its 
own sake, if our practice teaches chil- 
dren to prize it only as a ladder to 
renown, or as a price paid for applause ? 
But, my friends, the moment you car- 
ry your objections to the conductors 
of education, they tell you the emu- 
lative plan is the only one that the pre- 
vious management of their scholars 
allows them to use, with the least hope 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 45 

of getting out of them any tolerable 
amount of work. That is to say, the 
trail of the serpent runs all the way from 
alphabet to diploma: — and who knows 
how far beyond? Prior once proposed 
a system of early education, by having 
sweet-cakes cut out in the shape of the 
letters, — the child to eat a letter as 
soon as he had learned it, and so on, 
till he had devoured and digested this 
baked alphabet. One is reminded of this 
philosophy of compound nourishment, 
when he sees children made to believe 
that the only purpose of learning is to 
be fattened, whether on cake, money, or 
compliments. Suppose rather that, from 
the beginning of his studies, the boy 
were made to feel that the grand object 



46 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

of them is usefulness to society and the 
service of God. Suppose the question 
put foremost by the voice of father and 
mother, teachers and companions, were, 
how to learn to contribute the largest 
life to the welfare of man, and so how to 
help others to live ; how to lighten the 
load of the wronged and oppressed ; how 
to raise burdens, and cheer outcasts, and 
render science the minister to overtasked 
strength, and turn discovery to the relief 
of sorrow : — 

" How best to help the slender store, 
How mend the dwellings of the poor, 
How gain in life, as life advances, 
Valor and Charity, more and more." 

The mind can never open into its lar- 
gest compass and power under any but 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 47 

the broadest and highest motives. Nor 
can we begin too soon to expand it by 
that Christian measure. 

V. In some degree at variance with 
the danger of a selfish ambition, and yet 
often trying to keep it company, is that 
of an inordinate passion for popularity : 
the more seductive because it often joins 
itself with dispositions and manners in- 
trinsically attractive. I hold that the 
acquiring and cultivating of some genial 
and lasting friendships is one of the 
right objects of College life. Popularity, 
sought for power, is only another kind of 
ambition. Popularity, sought for the 
mere social currency, the luxury of 
pleasing and being pleased, and the 
excitement of the spirits, is a humaner 



48 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

thing. Yet, the moment it passes the 
Christian limit, it becomes a weakness, 
weakening true manliness. It has its 
own pernicious alliances, and works its 
own mischiefs. While ambition insti- 
gates to greater application, the love 
of popularity is quite as likely to run 
to idleness. While the former by its 
intellectual element may keep a man 
out of conviviality, this is always liable 
to drag him into it. Its worst conse- 
quences are compromises of conscience; 
yieldings of that stern and lofty princi- 
ple which is the only certain glory of a 
man ; the fatal downfall of a righteous 
independence ; the fear to stand up 
bravely for a conviction, and to stand 
alone for it, to the life's end ; the calling 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 49 

of good evil, and evil good ; the winking 
at falsehoods, or other sins, as trivial, 
only because Satan has made them fash- 
ionable. Not that there are no examples 
found among young men of an upright- 
ness all the more popular for its fearless- 
ness, especially if without cant or mo- 
roseness. Still, these must always be, in 
College as in the rest of the world, the 
illustrious exceptions. For the most 
part, the temptations and the favor- 
seekers go together; and the man who 
is determined to have " a good time," at 
all hazards, finds enough others glad of 
his countenance, his pocket-money, and 
his flattery. Now, what are all these 
supple compliances but the ripened pro- 
duct of the same misdirected inclinations 



50 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

which, years ago, slid away from the 
parents into the kitchen, to catch up the 
smooth gossip, coaxing, and adulation of 
the servants, or strolled into the street to 
find a laxer and gayer companionship; 
or, on the ball-ground, took the side of 
the majority against that inflexible fellow 
that dared to be singular, or the un- 
popular one that was so unfortunate as 
to be born awkward, or taciturn, or 
poor ? What right have you to presume 
the twist of seventeen years shall be 
straightened and forgot, by a transfer 
from your own roof to the crowded and 
unwatched walls of the College ? 

VI. A more honest kinswoman of this 
relish of popularity is genuine kindliness 
of heart ; — that blessed and brightening 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 51 

grace which redeems a community of 
young or old from barbarism, — is the 
charm of politeness, the cordiality of 
manners, the very essence of friendship, 
and, next to piety toward God, the 
purest manifestation of Christian love. 
You may suppose that, in the careless 
and happy groups which move through 
the walks and share the pleasures of aca- 
demic retreats, no darker and maligner 
spirit need ever intrude. And were all 
parents Christian parents, and all Chris- 
tian parents faithful, and the Church con- 
sistent, so it might be. Sourness and bit- 
terness, malice and envying, slander and 
revenge, cruelty and scorn, would surely 
seem to have no invitation or natural 
admission in these equalized and inti- 



\ 



52 HOME AKD COLLEGE. 

mate companies, where prejudice, and 
party, and mammon have no rightful 
foothold. But there is no fence about a 
College to bar out the transgressions of 
human kind. There is no sieve to win- 
now away the fostered iniquities of the 
candidates that come in. It is no Delos 
of inevitable peace. Your sons will 
bring the unfeeling temper that bad 
control has packed in their hearts, as 
surely as the raiment that your provi- 
dence has packed in their trunks. They 
will find some foolish fashions, half inhu- 
manity and half fun, the mixed heirloom 
of spite and sport, all ready to their 
hands. Whether they shall disown the 
barbarous inheritance ; whether they 
shall reject the petty tyranny, and keep 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 5o 

the harmless frolic ; whether they shall 
be bullies and boors and pugilists on the 
playground, or gentlemen everywhere; 
whether they shall count their fellows' 
feelings as sacred, and as deserving to 
be as delicately heeded, and their sen- 
sibilities to be as scrupulously respected, 
as any rights of purse or rank ; whether 
they shall magnanimously mark every 
sensitive nature, or sensitive spot in a 
harder nature, so as not to torture, but to 
encourage and reassure and comfort it; 
in short, whether they shall play the part, 
of malevolence or mercy, Christ's men or 
devil's men ; — do you not believe this is 
all to be chiefly decided before they ever 
take the first classmate by the hand? 
In order to cure the worst abuses we 

5* 



54 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

have among us, we want a more liberal 
infusion of this royal, manly gentleness. 
Join it with what vivacity, or wit, or 
robust laughter, you will ; only pour it 
in upon us, in the hearts of your boys, 
and you will Christianize our lingering 
savageness faster than by statutes, or 
corporation votes, or public denunciation. 
Let me tell you a story, not vouching for 
its particulars, but as it was told to me. 
You all know what * hazing " is, — and 
how threadbare and flat its ever repeated 
acts of silly violence have come to be. 
They say that not long ago some Soph- 
omores, of better purpose and more 
humor than some of their predecessors, 
heard that two Freshmen in their build- 
ing were fighting poverty for an educa- 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 55 

tion. One cold winter night, rapping 
loudly at their door, the Sophomores 
called them up, ordered them to dress, 
and led them up stairs blindfold to a dis- 
tant room. Leaving them there for 
their comrades to entertain, they then 
returned to the bare and empty room, 
spread a comfortable carpet over the 
floor, packed the closet full of fuel, 
built a roaring fire in the grate, made 
things generally cheerful, led back the 
bewildered Freshmen to their own door, 
shoved them in, and bade them good 
night. This is " hazing " gone philan- 
thropic. A very few such spirited jets 
of good feeling would revolutionize the 
stupidest custom that disgraces us. I 
have made no inquiry ; but nobody here 



56 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

will doubt that the prophecy of this little 
gospel might have been easily traced in 
two or three cheerful, kindly, charitable 
homes. God multiply them! 

Seek out the families where the chil- 
dren are suffered to plague each other, 
to impose on the younger, to despotize 
over timid servants, or to vex animals 
and murder insects, and you will be sure 
to find the material that will stock a Uni- 
versity with brutes. Seek the homes of 
happy, free-hearted charity, and you will 
find the antidote that will at last turn 
brutality itself into goodness. For, re- 
member, in this as in other respects we 
have noticed, it is not the ascetic, forbid- 
ding discipline, not the gloomy or sharp- 
strung households, that send us the right 



' 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 57 

trusty hearts and consciences. These 
only prepare a reaction, and let their 
children loose, when they send them 
from home, into the wild excesses of 
license. 

VII. These allusions bring us on to 
the last and profoundest condition of the 
student's welfare, honor and success, — 
his religious reverence and faith. What- 
ever may be thought of the views fore- 
going, I am sure no parent here, who has 
ever come to pray that his child may 
believe and fear God and keep his com- 
mandments, will deny that the divinely 
appointed school for this heavenly nur- 
ture is " the Church in the House." No 
later care, however vigilant or forti- 
fied, can make up for the terrible mis- 



58 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

chief of one irreligious year in childhood. 
No provisions of teaching or example, 
by a College government, can heal the 
ghastly wound inflicted by a father's pro- 
fanity. No theory of heavenly grace can 
excuse the Christian mother from her 
holy offices, serving in Christ's ministry. 
"What was testified by one of the strong 
statesmen of our early American history 
might be confessed in substance, prob- 
ably, by nearly all the best men that 
have lived in Christendom. " I be- 
lieve," he said, " that I should have been 
swept away by the flood of French infi- 
delity, but for one thing, — the remem- 
brance of the time when my sainted 
mother used to make me kneel by her 
bedside, taking my little hands folded 



> 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 59 

in hers, and causing me to repeat the 
Lord's prayer." I have been told that, in 
the wonderful and gracious experiments 
made in our times for kindling up a little 
light even in the darkness of idiocy, the 
first ray of intelligence that is observed 
to gleam across the imbecile's vacant 
face, and the first pulse of feeling strong 
enough to overmaster furious passions 
and arrest the aimless eyes, commonly ap- 
pear when some gentle touch or tone of 
womanly kindness rekindles in the heart 
the flickering impressions of a mother's 
tenderness. Could any proof more strik- 
ing show us what lips, whose countenance, 
ought first to dedicate the child to the 
Holy One? Even the old Romans in 
their heathenism had a touching supersti- 



60 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 



tion of holding the face of the new-born 
infant upward to the heavens, signifying, 
by thus presenting his forehead to the 
stars, that he was to look above the 
world, into glories celestial. The god- 
dess that was supposed to preside over 
this aspiring ceremony was named from 
a word which means a to raise aloft." A 
superstition it was then. Christianity, 
dispelling the fable and the doubt, gives 
us the clear realization of the dim, Pagan 
yearning, in a Christian baptism and the 
training of the Fold. What shall be said 
of those nominally Christian parents who 
discover less than the heathen sensibility, 
and, with all the blessed ordinances of 
the Divine Son of Mary in their sight, 
refuse to their children even the cove- 
nant and benediction of the Church ? 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 61 

There is a fable, in German literature, 
of the daughter of an Erl-King, whose 
infernal business it is to snatch little 
children away from parents and home. 
She comes even into the parents' pres- 
ence, and there, with crafty disguises and 
fair appearance, deceiving them in her 
malignant purpose, she contrives to whis- 
per into the unsuspecting ears many art- 
ful promises of fine shows and haj)py 
plays, till at last she wiles away victim 
after victim into dreary forests, — the 
land of darkness and shadows of death. 
Do we not all know something of this 
child-thief's seductions? Temptation is 
the Erl-King's daughter that never dies. 
She tears away children from their Fa- 
ther's House, — from virtue, from peace, 



62 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

from heaven. And you, parents, all help 
her or hinder her. If you are doing 
everything else for them, in expenditure 
and accomplishment, save only that one 
thing without which all the rest is 
worthless, you are giving them up al- 
ready to despair. If you make them 
in infancy only the sentimental recrea- 
tion and pampered fondlings of your idle 
hours, or send them out into the streets 
bespread with the fineries and fopperies 
of your own vanity, you will make them, 
not noble members of a high-bred state, 
but only the possible heirs of your prop- 
erty, and drivelling exhibitions of the 
accursed thirst for pomp and dress which 
debilitates our civilization and impover- 
ishes our humanity. If you take up the 



T 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 63 

unbelieving and abominable theory, that 
all children have got to run wild awhile, 
in the ways of corruption and vice, tast- 
ing death, before they can be gathered 
into the securities of religion, then you 
are training them to be disciples of that 
bleak creed, life without a faith, home 
without a Saviour, learning without a 
Bible. Somewhere, by some tongue, 
your child must be reverently taught in 
Christ's Gospel, or the wisest systems can 
promise you nothing for him. Not by 
chance, not at interrupted and infrequent 
seasons, but patiently and humbly, and 
day by day, that wonderful, most an- 
cient and eternal Book of books must 
be opened before him. Its sublime yet 
simple truths, plain to the child's under- 



64 HOME AND COLLEGE. 



standing, its hallowed personages, its 
grand prophets and ardent apostles, its 
venerable patriarchs and its inspired 
children, in their robes of light and forms 
of majesty and beauty, must pass before 
him. Its psalms must be sung into his 
soul. Its beatitudes and warnings must 
be planted in his remembrance. Its par- 
ables must engage his fancy. Its mira- 
cles must stir his wonder. Its cross, and 
tabernacle, and ark, and all its sacred em- 
blems, must people his imagination and 
possess his heart. Without that Bible, 
no child born among us can "pass the 
waves of this troublesome world," and 
come to Him whom only the Bible 
reveals. 

But regard your offspring as the law- 



; 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 65 

ful inheritors, through you, of Christ's 
spiritual covenants, as the destined mem- 
bers of his Church, and imitators of his 
life, and partakers of his redemption, as 
the appointed subjects of baptism, of 
prayer, of inward renewing and outward 
regulation, — as being born, each one, to 
yield the world a Christian character, and 
thus as being fearfully wronged when- 
ever religious indifference cheats them 
of this immortal privilege, — do this, 
and you will have no occasion to run in 
search of honors or favors for them. Do 
this, and in all our scholarship, society, 
and enterprise the kingdom of Heaven 
will come in the natural way, handed 
down from parent to child in the blood 
and all the hereditary strength of believ- 

6* E 



66 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

ing generations, spreading and gaining 
power with all the growth and progress 
and wisdom and refinement of the race. 

Such, my patient friends, seem to 
me some of the points of practical con- 
nection between the life lived in our 
Colleges, and the moral culture of our 
Homes. It may seem to you that, in il- 
lustrating them, I have presented rather 
the aspects of danger than those of hope. 
Let me earnestly assure you, then, that 
this has been only for the sake of giv- 
ing emphasis to the pressing importance 
of the subject. 

As to the mere question of fact, I join 
in no alarm. Such opportunities of judg- 
ment as I happen to have had in both 
lead me to the belief that, as respects 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 67 

moral perils and exposures, there is but 
little to choose between the college com- 
munity and that of any equal number 
of young men collected, or even scat- 
tered, in any central population, away 
from home ; and perhaps I might even 
say, whether away from home or not. 
There are some special safeguards, per- 
haps, at the College, in the routine of 
tasks, the frequency of the exercises, the 
pressure of occupation, and the general 
direction of the preparatory course. It 
so happens, in this neighborhood, that 
nearly every delinquency of undergrad- 
uates above the breaking of a window- 
pane is chronicled for the public, and 
reported over the country, till the opin- 
ion has become quite prevalent, that any 



68 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

young man who gets his degree without 
becoming a bully, an atheist, or a sot, 
escapes by about one chance in ten. The 
truth is, the large majority in every Col- 
lege are the quiet, industrious students, 
of whom the public hears nothing till 
they begin to be public men, coming up 
from virtuous and orderly houses, know- 
ing perfectly well what they have come 
for, and pursuing their object steadily, 
worthily, and virtuously. Circumstances 
are less unlike than they seem, and are 
hardly ever too mighty for a man. Prin- 
ciple is safe everywhere, for the Almighty 
is with it. The good conscience carries 
its own shield. The prayers of youth 
" prevail as a prince ; " and the interces- 
sions of any " household of faith " sur- 



HOME AND COLLEGE. 69 

round the absent son and brother with 
invisible power like a legion of angels. 

Indeed, the very truth presented here 
is full of encouragement. It discloses 
the whole formation of character, from 
first to last, as held under fixed and in- 
telligible laws. We are not left for con- 
fidence in our children's security to the 
blind and forlorn impulses of accident, 
but with a God and Father who re- 
members his covenants. Some strange, 
sad instances of a surprising lapse, or 
revolution into ruin, may distress us still. 
But, for the most part, thanks to the 
Lord and Eedeemer of families, believ- 
ing parents may build on a sure foun- 
dation, and, with a religious nurture in 
childhood, look for the faith afterward 
which overcometh the world. 



70 HOME AND COLLEGE. 

When the Christian Home and the 
Christian College are thus bound to- 
gether, each a helper and minister to the 
other, the grandest expectations of our 
fathers may be fulfilled. Education may 
then train, not portions and fragments 
of our nature, but the whole character 
and life of man. It may equip the law- 
givers and teachers and priests and cit- 
izens of a righteous and holy state. 

Learning may be humane, labor enlight- 
ened, commerce disinterested, art pure, 

the Church catholic, and the republic the 

kingdom of Christ. 



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